Spotlight on Mikko Sola

WM-data / Digital Media, Finland

“With Morae, we've been able to improve our reporting performance. Since we have faster access to the recorded material, we've reduced the manual workload and increased accuracy,” said Mikko Sola. Sola, the winner of TechSmith's Most Outrageous Lab contest, has been a usability consultant at WM-data for three years.

After performing a market survey, WM-data found Morae to be an attractive alternative among tailor-made systems. Sola said, “As mobility of the test equipment was of major importance, Morae turned out to be a good choice. We can store all test material in digital form, which is a big plus on backup and archiving. Plus, we can get more work done in less time, as many of the manual phases are unnecessary, and we need less debriefing following the test sessions.”

Before using Morae, WM-data had a usability laboratory with DV-camcorders, used the S-Video-output in the PC display adapter, and combined the two video streams via a video mixer to a DV-VCR. For mobile testing they just used the camcorder, as capturing from a laptop was not possible.

Currently, WM-data is using Morae for almost all their usability testing.

Sola said, “We have two usability labs with Morae Recorders and an additional number of laptops with Morae Recorders for mobile testing in client's facilities. We typically perform usability tests for a new company intranet or Web site in their usability lab.”

In addition, they use Morae as a screen recorder even for remote desktop testing when they don't have permission to install Morae Recorder on the client's PC.

Sola has many reasons why WM-data prefers using Morae over their previous testing setups.

First, they can include the observer's comments in real time during the testing via Morae Observer.

“This saves a lot of time, and the observer has more time to include even the minor comments - compared to our previous method, which included recording the time via stopwatch and writing the comments on a piece of paper,” he commented.

He also likes the light test setup, which requires just a webcam and laptops. “Not only is this very handy when testing in a client's facilities, but the webcam is less frightening than a video camera,” he said.

In addition, the ability to observe remotely is attractive to WM-data. Since clients often want to watch the tests, WM-data provides an observation session in the clients' facilities. “Normally, clients don't have the time to come to our labs, and this feature impresses them,” Sola reported. “Plus, from the test user's point of view, this relieves the pressure and tension of the test situation. Users quickly forget there are more observers than they can see in the room.”

Sola added, “I also like that we have the ability to quickly produce highlight videos for the clients. We easily demonstrate how the usability tests are conducted, and as they see the users' problems, the benefits are usually self-explanatory.”

“It's a major selling point to the new clients,” he finished.